FIA WEC: Toyota Ends Dry Spell with 6 Hours of Silverstone Pole Win

Toyota finally ended their dry spell of not winning a pole since Shanghai 2014 during today’s qualifying for the 6 Hours of Silverstone. They did so in a fashionable style by locking the front row with two of their TS050 Hybrid cars. Kamui Kobayashi in the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid set his best time of 1m36.793 before handing the car over to British driver Mike Conway, their average time was 1m37.304.

Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima were 0.2s slower in the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, enough to claim a 1-2 for Toyota. This was the 12th pole victory for the Japanese manufacturer since joining WEC. Neel Jani and Nick Tandy went third fastest in the #1 Porsche 919 Hybrid, the #2 sister car finished fourth.

LMP2 pole went to Alex Lynn and Pierre Thiriet in the #26 G Drive Racing Oreca-Gibson thanks to their 1m44.387 time which was only 0.05s faster than second placed Matt Rao and Nicolas Lapierre in the #36 Signatech Alpine.

6 Hours of Silverstone 2017

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Photos by Rajan Jangda

The LMGTE-Pro podium was evened out featuring three manufacturers, Ford took the honors by winning pole with the #67 Ford GT driven by local boys Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell. Second place went to the #71 Ferrari 488 GTE driven by Davide Rigon and Formula E ace Sam Bird. Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen went third fastest in the #95 Aston Martin Vantage.

Aston Martin won LMGTE-Am pole thanks to Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana in the #98 Vantage. Behind the Aston came Francesco Castellacci and Thomas Flohr in the #54 Ferrari 488 GTE while the #77 Porsche 911 RSR came home in third place.